Dear NFL, stop killing the Eastern time zone with these late games. The east coast has 47% of the US population and teams in the EST are responsible for ten out of the last thirteen Super Bowl wins. Do the math. We are your base. The guys who do sports radio can’t even stay up to watch the evening games if they want to make it to work the next morning. Related: a Jim Gaffigan tweet.

So, the dishwasher drains into the sink drain above the garbage disposal. The garbage disposal needed to be run for half a second to clear out the drain before I ran dishes yesterday. I failed to do that. The dishwasher backed up and drained all over the kitchen floor for a bit yesterday morning. It was enough water that it was dripping into the basement in three separate locations; fortunately it was in the unfinished half of the basement.

Speaking of the basement, we finished hashing out the details and signed a proposal for a bathroom to be installed. With a queen bed, futon, jetted tub, and glass shower stall, the basement will be the ultimate guest suite.

Stephen started preschool on Tuesday; it’s only six hours a week. It’s enough time for Henry and I to get some one-on-one play time, which has been great. We take walks or jump on the trampoline without the disruption of big brother knocking everyone over. Stephen seems to enjoy it and was surprisingly outgoing on the first day. He immediately went to a seat and did not care one bit that we were leaving. I had to pick him up early on Thursday and he was happily playing castle vs. dragons with another boy. Note: this is not zombie-related. Victory.

With the exception of two or three days, the weather has been fantastic. My favorite classification of weather is “attic fan weather” – not using heat or air conditioning for days on end. The attic fan is one of my favorite inventions. It actually got down to 45 last night.

Henry is slowly coming around to our new models of communication. It took him a bit to learn the “more” sign, but now he knows that it’s a good way to attract positive attention. We’ve been attending an endless string of meetings to see if he qualifies for the county-run preschool program, the next of which is this Friday. His bedtime routine is getting a little bit better. He pretty much sleeps on a giant teddy bear on the floor every night. Soon I will get brave and try to get him to nap in his brother’s room.

My wife is entering the third trimester, and we have been getting a few things for Charlotte’s room. We have a hot air balloon theme and I think it’s going to look very nice. My wife got through the second trimester with no problems. She was up and active and she has not developed a permanent stuffy nose. She’s [obviously] hoping that won’t happen this time around.

I pretty much don’t take cats to the vet. For the first two years, while they get fixed and get all their shots, I’m on board. After that I just sort of let them live wild. I grew up in a house with an outdoor cat that never went to the vet, and she lived to be 21. We’ve been using a traveling vet to come see the dogs for about eight years, and she didn’t even know we had a cat. Well the cat has had diarrhea for months now. This time I included the cat in the vet checkup. She ran a bunch of tests (surprisingly only cost 50 bucks total) and said the cat has a hyperactive thyroid, which is common in older cats and could cause diarrhea. Now I have a little pill to crush up in her food twice a day.